Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a British astrophysicist at Oxford University who discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics, Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum conference in Dublin, said: ‘I do suspect we are going to get signs of life elsewhere, maybe even intelligent life, within the next century."

Bell said we are most likely to find alien life where we find rocky planets with carbon dioxide and ozone in the atmospheres. ‘If we do suspect there is intelligent life out there, are we going to make ourselves known to them or not? Bell added that even if we do find signs of alien life, it is likely to take decades to talk to them from Earth via radio or lasers.

"Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So you are probably talking of conversations that could take 50 or 100 years, just one way," she concluded.

According to Britain's Daily Mail. a poll of more than 2,000 men and women for the Royal Society found that 44 per cent are of the opinion extra-terrestrial life exists and more than a third of those questioned said we should be actively searching and trying to make contact with extraterrestrial civilizations.

“The fact that we have not yet found the slightest evidence for life -- much less intelligence -- beyond this Earth," said Arthur C. Clarke, "does not surprise or disappoint me in the least. Our technology must still be laughably primitive, we may be like jungle savages listening for the throbbing of tom-toms while the ether around them carries more words per second than they could utter in a lifetime."

In an earlier interview Lord Martin Rees, Great Britain's Royal Astronomer and Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge believes the existence of extraterrestrial life may be beyond human understanding.

“They could be staring us in the face and we just don’t recognize them. The problem is that we’re looking for something very much like us, assuming that they at least have something like the same mathematics and technology. I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms we can’t conceive. Just as a chimpanzee can’t understand quantum theory, it could be there as aspects of reality that are beyond the capacity of our brains.”

"I certainly think that humans are not the limit of evolutionary complexity. There may indeed be post–human entities, either organic or silicon–based, which can in some respects surpass what a human can do," said Rees. "I think it would be rather surprising if our mental capacities were matched to understanding all the levels of reality. The chimpanzees certainly aren't, so why should ours be either? So there may be levels that will have to await some post-human emergence."

Meanwhile, Frank Drake, the founder of SETI and Drake's Equation, believes that satellite TV and the “digital revolution” is making humanity invisible to aliens by cutting the transmission of TV and radio signals into space. The earth is currently surrounded by a 50 light year-wide “shell” of radiation from analogue TV, radio and radar transmissions. According to Drake, digital TV signals would look like white noise to a race of observing aliens.

Although the signals have spread far enough to reach many nearby star systems, they are rapidly vanishing in the wake of digital technology, said Drake. In the 1960s, Drake spearheaded the conversion of the Arecibo Observatory to a radio astronomy center. As a researcher, Drake was involved in the early work on pulsars. Drake also designed the Pioneer plaque with Carl Sagan in 1972, the first physical message sent into space. The plaque was designed to be understandable by extraterrestrials should they encounter it.

Milan Cirkovic of the Astronomical Observatory in Belgrade, points out that the median age of terrestrial planets in the Milky Way is about 1.8 gigayears (one billion years) greater than the age of the Earth and the Solar System, which means that the median age of technological civilizations should be greater than the age of human civilization by the same amount. The vastness of this interval indicates that one or more processes must suppress observability of extraterrestrial communities.

The image at top and bottom of page is of Alpha Centauri, a binary star system, the nearest star system from Sol at 4.37 light years from Earth. Since both principal stars are fairly similar to the Sun in age and metallicity, Astronomers believe that planets could orbit Alpha Centauri A or Alpha Centauri B individually, or on large orbits around the binary Alpha Centauri AB.

Comments

I guess these people have never heard of Roswell or the other crash retrievals. The US government and many other powerful governments around the world have known we are not alone for well over half a decade now since WW2 after our atomic testing. Clearly they would rather hide the evidence and try to gain even more power, through back-engineering the alien technologies. It's all hidden under the dark cloak of national security. The head of the Armies foreign technology division at the pentagon, Col. Phillip J Corso lays it all out in his book. The day after Roswell.

The reason the government feels obligated and justified in hiding the most important discovery in the history of mankind, comes from a report from the Brookings institute. A powerful think tank. In which a paper or report was published, stating that public knowledge of the visitors would likely destroy our economic and sociological structures. In other words the average unwashed masses could not handle the reality of the situation and they felt that their power structures (both religious and economical) would crumble overnight if the information was made public.

Planets? I don't think that any have been confirmed in the Centauri system, have they? Helghan and Vekta come from the game Killzone. Editor's Comment: Oops! One of our Ivy League interns put that in there as a joke. We missed it in the copy editing. Gotta have a sense of humor.

@matthew
"have known we are not alone for well over half a decade now"
you mean half a century?

but I agree with you. I think there is plenty of evidence to support that we are not alone. but I also think that we, as a global community, are being kept in the dark when it comes to ALL the big questions: Are we alone (no), is there life after death (yes), does God exist (depends on your definition of God), but these are just my opinions based on a decade of research and reflection.
But I do think that if we could get some definite answers to these questions we would be in a much better position as a species to make real and meaningful change to society and culture. But so long as the answers remain in the dark, the majority of people will remain on the fence and refuse to really believe anything simply out of the fear that they may be wrong.
but again, just my opinion.

"Are we alone (no), is there life after death (yes), does God exist (depends on your definition of God), but these are just my opinions based on a decade of wishful thinking and reading conspiracy blogs."

Matthew - I very much want to believe that relatively friendly aliens are here or have been here recently. However, this quote pops in my head when I ponder what really happened at Roswell - "if governments are involved in the cover ups, they are doing a much better job of it than they seem to do at anything else" – Stephen Hawking.

I do not believe that a large number of humans could keep a secret that big. This topic touches to people's souls. There should be death bed confessions and whistle-blowers. The regular motivation for keeping the secret (patriotism, national security) do not apply to this topic. Another reason I am extremely skeptical of the Roswell incident is this...American top secret stealth plane is 30 years ahead of a foreign enemy in this hypo. The plane crashes in a remote field, but in enemy territory. America makes it priority to bomb the wreckage to keep the technology away from the enemy. I just don't believe that an alien civilization that could be millions of years ahead of us in technology would just allow the natives to scavenge their technology. Even if traveling to earth is a great hardship for the aliens, they would make it a priority to get the ship back. I realize that the so-called Roswell saucer could have come from a species that never intended more than one visit here and we will not be seeing them again. But the technology is presumably extremely powerful and it is hard to contain power signatures of that magnitude from comparably advanced visitors to our planet and I doubt they would allow us infants to play with that kind of power. I also believe that great prestige would go to the first nation to confirm the existence of intelligent alien life. Why spend enormous resources to hide info that is sure to be released inevitably?

Just playing a little devil's advocate since a part of me believes at least some of the Roswell story.

10 i = i + 1
20 PRINT i
30 IF i > 100000 THEN i = 0: GOTO 10
40 IF INKEY$ = "" THEN 10
50 PRINT "Bible, Line:", i

King James:
http://www.losethos.com/files/BIBLE.TXT

God says...
Line 65667

have they feared, nor walked in my law, nor in my statutes, that I set
before you and before your fathers.

44:11 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel;
Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, and to cut off all
Judah.

44:12 And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces
to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be
consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed
by the sword and by the famine: they shall die, from the least even
unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine: and they shall be
an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.

----

(Dud) He will talk if you offer something. Cain and Abel is the most important story in the Bible. Offer praise or songs.

Now, I offer something. Umm, God? Praise You for pulsars and those lil tiny super heavy things. What's the best star in a 50 light yars radius? (Now, give Him about 20 seconds).

God says line:25817

great or small, but that he will shew it me: and why should my father
hide this thing from me? it is not so.

20:3 And David sware moreover, and said, Thy father certainly knoweth
that I have found grace in thine eyes; and he saith, Let not Jonathan
know this, lest he be grieved: but truly as the LORD liveth, and as
thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death.

20:4 Then said Jonathan unto David, Whatsoever thy soul desireth, I
will even do it for thee.

20:5 And David said unto Jonathan, Behold, to morrow is the new moon,
and I should not fail to sit with the king at meat: but let me go,
that I may hide myself in the field unto the third day at even.

20:6 If thy father at all miss me, then say, David earnestly asked
leave of me that he might run to Bethlehem his city: for there is a
yearly sacrifice there for all the family.

You see? That last one talked. There's probably a good star around the next new moon or something like that. God joshes. He is Abba (Daddy). The purpose of life is to love Him and enjoy his company. Do not "use" God.

I do random words -- take a stop watch and pick from 100 words. It's a Ouija board, essentually. "Tongues" is the same idea -- being puppeted.

Terry is the reason why the government rightfully assumes that the religious community would crumble overnight. You see the stupidity in his posts? He says nothing as he quotes the good books, because his mind isn't capable of thinking in terms that don't include his view of god. How can you have an intelligent conversation with someone like that. If i were in charge of the military at the highest level i wouldn't waste my time trying to educate these people either.

Besides the decade / century mistake, I would say Mathew has a much more logical point then any of these other rants. The Government hiding secrets? Wow how could that be? They have been doing it for years and it makes plenty of sense to keep this a secret so they can back engineer alien technology and use it for military purposes. Ever wonder how our technology advanced so quickly over the past 50 years?

Try watching the "Disclosure Project" then tell me there are no ET's visiting our planet. Why would such people of stature lie about these things. It only makes them look crazy. There are zero positive outcomes for coming fourth and telling what they know. Why would people come fourth on their death beds? If your about to die you think making up some stories about aliens is the way to go out? Other countries such as Mexico and France have made serious efforts to disclose this information but nobody ever hears that. You know why? The government controls our media so you hear and see what they want you to see. That is the great thing about the internet which is about to be erased thanks to "The Patriot Act" Seriously people, wake up!

We are a civilization with amnesia and we have no idea how are brains could have grown so quickly through evolution (Sorry Darwin, your right about every other species though) or how the Big Bang was started (Sorry Georges LeMaitre, you can't tell us what created the Big Bang so even if it's true it still brings us back to the question of is there a God). We know NOTHING and we will continue to know NOTHING until the damned ET's finally accept us worthy enough to know, which really aggravates me because I want to know!

...We are mere children playing with 25 year old technology in a 15 billion year old universe. Our universe contains everything we can imagine and a whole lot more. Its time to pull our collective heads out of the sand, take the blinders off and push the search into high gear. Life is a mystery, its up to us to discover the secrets.

it amuses me a bit seeing how people assume that ET are all-knowing. they obviously know more than us if they managed to get to our planet, but when it comes to some of our most difficult questions about the universe, they might be just as puzzled.

Stefan - I agree with you. We tend to refer to aliens as they are not only all-knowing, but members of the same species or alliance. I suppose it is possible that there are one or two dominant, billion year old civilizations that control the galaxy. Then again it is just as likely that there are thousands of competing civilizations that are competing for galactic resources just as we on earth have been for centuries. Another possibility is that the odds for intelligent life in the universe amount to having only one in a million galaxies host a single intelligent species. I hope it is not the latter. Something about us being the only ones within millions of light years is very dark and foreboding to me.

I completely agree on the Hawking quote. There has just been no compelling evidence for ET. Why always blurry pictures? Shaky ass videos? Unintelligible audio? Simply no clear cut evidence. UFOlogy is just an entertainment industry. People turn everything into business, period.

I remember a Sagan quote something to the likes of 'Nature is not obliged to exist in a way in which fulfills human ambition.'

In other words, relativistic travel is centuries away and even that is a slow speed for even the local group.

So there's only a microscopic chance we will find intelligent alien life but a much better chance of finding microscopic alien life.

Perhaps within our lifetimes, immense technical and theoretical developments in astronomy will allow us to scan exo-planetary systems in our neighbourhood of the galaxy in formidable detail. Who knows... as far as 'aliens' go... maybe we'll see them before they see us.

I can see them hiding it from everyone, just as they would hide an Asteroid heading for earth. They think people can't handle the information of life coming to an end or changing...

Science has proven religion wrong time and time again!!! No such thing as evolution? No so such thing as aliens? Governments and authorities around the world are wrong about everything. I hope we find evidence of life elsewhere so we can stop fighting each other, stop shitting on each others believes, and work together...

I say,
If you want to believe in God, Believe in God. But don't go and push it down peoples throats, if you ask me, I am not super religious, but I am starting to believe Religion is what has been holding us back in life!!!

How come these scientific articles and discussions always drop into talks about conspiracy and religion? As soon as people start with their fearing god speeches or how the government is hiding everything from us, you take away from the original post, which poses actual science.

I really hope we do discover alien life in my life-time. However, given the spaces between us and the nearest star system, let alone others beyond it with planets in the habitable zone, it would surprise me greatly. We are going to have to have a technological revolution to get us to the point of either being able to explore these places in greater detail, or increase our sensitivity to in-coming that might be crossing path.

Given the time that we have been a technological society, I highly doubt that aliens would have been sending us personal messages. More then likely, we will first hear something like we have sent out, some sort of radio broadcast from the beginning of an alien society.

Re: covering up the existence of ET. Number of reasons why this is true, you just need to think psychologically:

1)the ease of doing it via 'debunking' - remember that the masses are easily manipulated; 'the beauty of the ultimate secret is that you can tell it to anyone and no one will ever believe it'; the systematic debunking and misinformation campaign is extremely effective, mainly due to constantly repeating the lie that anyone who even speculates about these things is a 'conspiracy nut', thus 'character assassination', meaning whatever they say is ridiculed and ignored by the masses. Look at 9/11 - most people believe the towers collapsed 'due to structural failure' even though the simple physical and forensic evidence makes such an explanation impossible - they all saw an obvious controlled demo live on tv, but have been so conditioned that they simply can't cope with the shocking truth.

2) the reason for covering it up - the point of the entire world conspiracy (the new world order) is to maintain control over the masses via various mechanisms and frameworks. part of this is to prevent independent thought and questioning. world knowledge of ETs (like space travel itself, or mind-altering drugs) gives mankind hope and dreams for the future, thus making them less controllable. such knowledge would destroy the power structures, including the organised religions that keep billons of people enslaved by restrictive thought patterns. Such a revelation about ETs would thus be an utter disaster for the new world order conspirators.

3) The fact that ETs have been here for millennia (e.g. ancient gods) - one can see now how there has been a kind of information war, or war for the soul of mankind - if you look closely throughout history you'll see countless examples of 'great people', or visionaries, who have tried to help manikind break free from restrictive patterns of thought and power structures so they can be ready to join the galactic civilisation. Buddhists would call them 'bodhisattvas'. Note also how most of these people are hounded and persecuted. Debunking today is the exact equivalent. This 'war' necessarily has to be 'invisible' and disguised. Human beings are far too fragile to cope with the informtion at the moment, precisely because of the social and mental conditioning they have suffered, in paticular by judaeo-christianity-islam and atheism.

But open your eyes calmly, and you'll see us trying to help you (hopefully in a non-patronising way!)

What I find hard to digest is that conspiracy nuts have no trouble accepting that the Government can hide huge things like Aliens crashing on Earth (Roswell) and masterminding 9/11, but they can't shut down some websites that publish this information.

The "cover up's" are not covered up in the slightest. They are the rants of people with low common sense and no position in society. The government doesn't care who believes it or not and are not trying to disprove or cover up anything.

K.Ersh:
erm, i think you may have inadvertently illustrated my point. don't you realise that if they 'shut down some websites that publish such information' then this would reveal some kind of conspiracy? My point is that they allow this information to come out and then debunk it precisely in order to remove any effectiveness of the information in the eyes of the public, thus allowing the 'conspiracy nuts' to say what they like knowing that few people will take it seriously. in fact, they go further, by deliberately creating their own debunkable conspiracy theories (straw man arguments) and then debunking them. the lunar landings one is a classic example.

Also, for the really deeper conspiracy stuff you will actually find that these websites are in fact shutdown. For example on the day the 7/7 inquiry report came out, the main truth movement website questioning the official story was shut down for the entire day. So it does happen.

As i said, your immediate dismissiveness proves my point. it's called social conditioning. there have been studies showing that it actually causes people physical pain to change a long-held belief...